What does Gecho do?

As one of the owners put it: "An art object that creates more art in the process."

Gecho is a hand-made, digital, polyphonic pocket synthesizer controlled by buttons and sensors. Whenever you power it on, it becomes a meditation tool, source of endless music from your environment... Or an amusing sound processor reacting to your voice, other instruments and various everyday objects that make sound or noise.

It is a meditative and experimental device, sampler and effect processor built rather for the experience than any serious use (although many owners have found their way).

Basically, it can run various sound engines and modulate what's going on inside with your voice, or signal from the line-in, or combination of both; this often creates interesting and unexpected results. And if the particular engine works with a sequence or a chord progression, it's also playable by MIDI. If you intend to use it in making music, probably the most useful thing you can do is to find interesting sounds and record them into DAW or a sampler.

With default settings, it generates pleasant soundscapes like it's predecessors, classic Gecho V1 and Glo... But if you are willing to dig deeper, there are many ways how to configure it to do what you need.

 

Should you get one?

Of course there isn't a definitive answer and everone's expectations are different, but over the years I've observed a trend. As a rule of thumb, just look at other gear you use.

If you have a collection of Korg Volcas, Pocket Operators, Bastl Kastl or something from Rakit, Error Instruments, Ellitone, Spherical Sound Society, Cat Full of Ghosts or some other small synths manufactured rather by DIY‑ers than big corporations, then Gecho is likely to be a good fit for you.

Those are devices that I have as well and my goal is to make my synths compatible with this ecosystem.

Also, it is a good idea to get a MIDI keyboard (I use Arturia Keystep) for playing in real time and for easier programming.

If, on the other hand, you already use larger gear for example from Electron, Ableton, Novation or Teenage Engineering's OP-1 or OP-Z, and you are not a collector, then my product probably does not have anything interesting to offer you. I don't know much about that group of synths and I am not planning to get any of them in order to figure out how to make my devices seamlessly compatible with them.

Of course the world of music making is not strictly divided into these two camps, numerous people keep in high regard both pocketable and desktop gear, and figured out how to make a good use of them all.

 

What is it

• Art project, artisan-crafted device
• Experimental "magic music box" that will often surprise you
• A personal, meditative experience generator with binaural beats
• Universal, hackable, open source, compact DSP processor
• Aural augmented reality malleable with your input
• MIDI-playable sampler and looper
• Ultimate ASMR exploring tool
• A quirky little thing

 

What is it not

• Live performance tool or good for concerts. Because of sensitive microphones it will be subject to acoustic feedback (Larsen effect). You may get interesting results using line input or no input at all, however it will no longer be influenced with your voice or sounds from the environment. For the same reason, it will not work well when used with power amplifiers or studio monitor speakers; it is designed to be used with headphones
• Suitable for exhibitions or art installations as it will not work well in loud environments
• Field recorder. The function is there for convenience but the fidelity is inferior to a common hand-held recorder like Tascam or Zoom
• Noise cancellation device. Think of it as an augmentation of accoustic reality, not filtering the real world out (unless you use noise cancelling headphones, but find some with minimal latency or it will ruin the experience in interactive channels - device's own latency is near zero)
• Cure for tinnitus, although a handful of owners reported that it helps them to some degree
• Too easy to use. Like any other instrument it requires some learning, also reading the manual and consulting included printed material is inevitable
• A fully finished synth. Rather it is an ongoing development, in large part driven by feedback from owners
• A synth designed with any particular use case scenario in mind

 

What you may find annoying

• While this is a quite complex device, there is no display, the only indication is rows of LEDs. The operation is contextual, the same buttons (and sensors) do various things depending on where you are (which channel, or which menu); options are arranged in a way that make most sense there and then. In addition to what buttons normally do while something plays, there are 3 different menus (configuration settings, in-play, and service). This means it may take a while to memorize things and you will need to look into manual often.
• If there are no batteries (supported or installed), and you are powering it from USB, you need to flip the power on switch before plugging the USB in (this is because the switch in OFF position selects firmware upload mode instead of normal operation)
• The micro SD card slot (in complete wooden boxed model) is deep and although it uses a push‑push type locking mechanism, the card will not get out far enough to be pulled out with fingers. You need to use tweezers or this trick. People sometimes ask why is it designed this way. There is a reason indeed; when manufacturing electronics on small scale it is not feasible to have two different versions of PCB made (prototyped, tested & certified), as that would pretty much double the costs - and we'd need one PCB for the complete unit, and another for thin & narrow plastic shell model which we plan to continue manufacturing after the wooden boxes run out
• AA batteries (in complete wooden boxed model) are under a sliding door which may be tricky to close, but once you know how, it is easy. Also it is not too easy to remove them with bare fingers, better use a key, skewer, screwdriver or similar tool
• There are no step-by-step video tutorials and no plan to make them, as unfortunately I do not have capacity to record and edit long videos. I prefer to spend the time making the product better by updating the firmware, or designing new pocket synths. Everything is explained in printed materials or online (manual / settings leaflet / list of channels and their controls). Please consider if this works for you before buying

 

Common misconceptions

• The device itself without a SD card (supported in v2 model only) does not have accessible sample storage. Preloaded samples such as meditative soundscape backgrounds are stored in internal Flash and not easily replaceable (you'd need to connect to a PC via USB and run a Python script). Sampler / looper engine by default uses internal memory which is tiny, so the maximum loop at default sampling rate (50.78kHz) is 1.5 second. In "infinite looper" channels (#22-24) this can be increased to 3, 6 or more seconds by lowering the "tape speed" and sacrificing fidelity, but most other channels only process small chunks of sound at a time. Those that use SD card for sample storage (such as #222 "SD Slicer") can of course replay a lot longer samples, only limited by available space.
• There is no touch keyboard on the front. What looks like a little keyboard is only an indicator, illuminated with LEDs which displays currently playing ot programmed chord
• There is no pre-installed battery (e.g. Li-Po) as we cannot ship them. If you want rechargeable powering shceme you need to buy a suitable battery and solder it in
• You can use rechargeable AA batteries (Ni-Cd, Ni-Mh, Ni-Zn) but they will not be charged inside the device when plugged to USB (as it does not "know" what batteries were installed or if they are rechargeable at all). You need to take them out and charge in a dedicated charger
• SD card is not included (and not essential for operation in most channels)
• There is no built in speaker, you need to use headphones
• Bluetooth headphones are not supported. Although the ESP32 chip used on the board has a BT transmitter and also Wi-Fi, certification is prohibitively expensive

 

Tech specs

This pre‑production update talks about the hardware in detail.

 

Demos

All demo videos are on the YT channel and Instagram,
there is also a growing list of reviews and owner-contributed demos.

We are working on more, but it is one of the most time consuming aspects of this project, so please be patient. New functions usually appear in the firmware update long before they get demoed.

 

Shipping and Taxes

Prices are final and for EU customers include all applicable taxes.
Non-EU customers, please be aware that depending on your country's customs regulations, you may need to pay import duty & tax. More information in the FAQ page.